Research has shown that there is a relationship between children's knowledge about memory and the learning strategies they employ. However, little is known about the overall structure and organization of children's knowledge about memory, and little is known about which aspects of memory knowledge children use to select strategies. The proposed research will address these two issues by investigating children's causal-explanatory conceptions of how memory strategies work to improve recall. First, the study will examine children's explanations of how memory strategies work in order to understand what they see as the most important causal influences on memory. Understanding the causal mechanisms that children appeal to will be important for characterizing their underlying, naive theories about memory, and for understanding how those theories change with age. Second, the study will examine the relationship between children's conceptions of how a memory strategy works, and their decisions to use the strategy. Children with a causal conception of how a strategy works will be distinguished from those who know that the strategy affects recall, but who do not understand how it works. The groups will be compared in terms of their strategy use. This will suggest whether understanding a mechanism by which a strategy works is related to children's strategy selection. In addition, children without a conception of how the strategy works will receive training in the form of an explanation of how the strategy works to determine if this will increase their use of the strategy. The results will have implications for training programs seeking to improve strategic memory in slow learners.